Mickey Rooney joins San Diego Air and Space Museum, May 7
Mickey Rooney, known for his roles in “National Velvet” (1944) with Elizabeth Taylor, “The Bridges at Toko-Ri” (as a Navy fighter pilot)(1954), “Black Stallion” (1979) and, most recently, “Night at the Museum” (2006) is appearing at the San Diego Air & Space Museum’s “Hollywood Studs & Starlets” fundraising event on May 7. All proceeds from the event benefit the Museum’s youth educational programs.

Rooney’s appearances on film, stage and television span almost 90 years. He has won multiple awards, including an Honorary Academy Award, an Emmy and a Golden Globe Award. Working as a performer since childhood, he rose to stardom as a teenager, and he has had one of the longest careers of any actor.

The Hollywood Studs & Starlets Event takes place at the San Diego Air & Space Museum, Balboa Park 2001 Pan American Plaza San, Diego, CA 92101 , on Saturday May 7, at 5:30 p.m. -10:30 p.m. The cost is $250-$300 . The evening will be a glamorous affair that includes dancing, special dance performances, live entertainment (The Jazz Project Big Band with special guest Dave Scott), red carpet and paparazzi, celebrity impersonators, silent and live auctions and much more.

For more information, please visit: sandiegoairandspace.org.

Get ready to plug in!
Charging stations for electric vehicles are coming to Balboa Park. Three charging stations are planned for Balboa Park, but as of yet the exact locations are unknown.

Part of the “EV Project,” a $230-million federal grant awarded to San Francisco–based renewable energy firm ECOtality, the charging stations will gather information about electric vehicle use. 15,000 stations will be installed in 18 cities across the U.S, thousands of which will be in San Diego.

The project is free to the city of San Diego and may even generate revenue if meters are installed to monitor use.

Do you hear voices? The Giskin cell phone adventure follows the journey of two characters, Drake and Pandora, as they discover and decode the thoughts of people from the past (World War II era). Visitors can participate by using a cell phone to dial into numbers posted on markers around Balboa Park. It’s free to play.

The Giskin Anomaly game consists of a series of episodes, each of which start with a round window decal at a Balboa Park institution.

• Episode One starts at The Old Globe theatre’s box office.
• Episode Two starts at The San Diego Museum of Art’s front door.
• Episode Three starts at The San Diego Natural History Museum’s south front door.
• Episode Four starts at the Japanese Friendship Garden. Look for the sign on the patio.
• Episode Five starts at the San Diego Air & Space Museum’s Front Door.
• Episode Six starts at Mingei International Museum.
• Episode Seven starts at the Reuben H. Fleet Science
Center.

The San Diego Union-Tribune has called the game, “A new way to see the park.” The game “takes one back in time while testing one’s detective skills in a cell-phone adventure game that’s part scavenger hunt, part information, part half-hour easy walk and wholly entertaining.

Phone App helps visitors navigate Balboa Park
July marks Balboa Park’s first anniversary of its free phone app.
Initiated by the Balboa Park Online Collaborative, the app helps visitors navigate around our city’s jewel.
Available on iTunes, it offers users the ability to find specific museums, hours of operation and current exhibits. A map also offers a where-you-are-now feature to orient yourself when you’re already in the park, and users can also search area restaurants.

“The balboapark.org portal is already attracting more than 6,000 visits per month from people using iPhones, iPods, and iPads. We expect that this number will continue to rise,” said Rich Cherry, BPOC’s director. “The app makes it easier for people to not only find what they’re looking for, but also to find related events in the park that they might not have found otherwise.”

The app is available from Apple’s App Store on iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad.

Digital by design: Balboa Park Collaborative gathers collections online
Balboa Park is in the process of gathering several of its gallery and museum exhibits online.

Since 2008, when the Balboa Park Online Collaborative (BPOC) launched, it has begun altering the interactions of the Park’s many institutions with visitors.

“Using our shared rapid digitization lab, we have digitized more than 140,000 photos, slides, videos, audio clips, and pages of archival materials. Additionally, more than 170,000 images have been published online, garnering more than 2 million page views,” notes BPOC’s website: bpoc.org.

BPOC is comprised of 20 park organizations. Current projects in development, as reported recently by the San Diego Union-Tribune, include:

Japanese Friendship Garden (niwa.org) A Koi Pond cam at the Japanese Friendship Gardens that would stream video to the garden’s tea house and website.

Museum of Photographic Arts (mopa.org): Posting online of approximately 2,000 of the more than 7,000 images the collaborative has digitized for the museum (scheduled for late April).

San Diego Air & Space Museum (sandiegoairandspace.org): Continuing digitization of collection, including photos, videos, slides and more than 6,000 rolls of film.

San Diego Museum of Art (sdmart.org): Developing a “search the collection” module for the museum’s website concurrent with posting images of the entire collection online (scheduled for summer).

San Diego Natural History Museum (sdnhm.org): Making the museum’s extensive collection of the diaries of Laurence Klauber, which have already been digitized and posted, searchable; digitizing and posting the museum’s map collection.

Joan and Irwin Jacobs provide support for expanding public wireless access in Balboa Park
The Joan and Irwin Jacobs Fund of the Jewish Community Foundation has contributed $100,000 to the Balboa Park Online Collaborative (BPOC) for its wireless network infrastructure project in Balboa Park.

The funds will be used for the hardware and labor cost involved with building a pervasive public wireless network throughout the central Balboa Park campus, where the vast majority of the Park’s museums and other cultural institutions are located. WiFi access will be free for San Diego residents and tourists, enriching their Park experience and connecting them to the Park’s cultural institutions, visitor resources, and each other.

“We see this as a strategic investment to significantly enhance the visitor experience in Balboa Park,” said Dr. Irwin Jacobs, co-founder of Qualcomm Incorporated, pioneer and world leader of Code Division Multiple Access digital wireless technology.

Since Qualcomm’s founding just over 25 years ago, the mobile phone first used only for voice communications has become an extraordinarily powerful mobile computer supported by wireless broadband communications—the largest information platform in the history of humankind,” Dr. Jacobs said. “It’s exciting to think about the applications of mobile technology that can now take place in Balboa Park, our city’s jewel.”

BPOC currently provides public wireless Internet access in six locations in Balboa Park. With the support from the Jacobs Fund, BPOC will continue to build public wireless hot spots throughout 2011 and 2012, with the intent of having more than 250 access points deployed by fall of 2012. This initiative complements BPOC’s recently completed project to connect 14 buildings in the Park through high-speed fiber optic cable.

“This generous donation from the Jacobs family is an important component to our effort to make Balboa Park a relevant and exciting destination for 21st century visitors,” said Rich Cherry, BPOC director.

“Dr. Jacobs’ example as an entrepreneur, innovator and philanthropist adds tremendous value to the San Diego region. I am so grateful for Joan and Irwin’s support of the local arts community, and particularly in Balboa Park, as we strive to meet the changing expectations of our audiences,” Cherry said.